Stefaan A Eeckels <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 23:49:05 +0200 > David Kastrup <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > You define "based on" for source code as "not runnable in compiled > format without the library and containing references to the > library's API". The way I would define "based on" for source code is > "incorporating modified or unmodified source code from the library". > > Your definitions opens, IMHO, more cans of worms you'd ever wanted > to open in an entire lifetime.
Well, the U.S. copyright system is a larger can of worms I'd ever wanted to have opened, but it is not my choice to make. I am merely trying to get an estimate about how large the can might be. The copyright code is more explicit for literary works, so trying to extrapolate from there seems a reasonable approach to me. >> Anyway, for Qt the point is quite moot, since an API-compatible >> library (Qt commercial) under a different license is available, and >> so source code written for Qt does not require a GPLed library >> version to run. The code might be useless without Qt, but not so >> without _GPLed_ Qt. > > I believe neither the existence of another library or another > license, nor the "usefulness" of source code without the called > libraries or the supporting OS has anything to do with its copyright > status. Well, I think that this can construed differently. A book containing annotations, for example, is useless without the original, and it is considered a derivative work. If I put instructions about where to download a copy to be used against the intent of the license, am I not party to the process? If I sell fully functional guns without ammunition, but tell people where to mail-order them, can I claim that I did not sell weapons since without ammunition, the guns are just toys? Now if the customer chooses to link a GPLed library (but not redistribute the result), he is allowed to do so. But the choice is not really for the customer to make: he _has_ to do it, as that is what his original purpose requires. Is the provider of source code involved with "distributing" it if he just gives pointers? In a sane world, probably not. Unfortunately, we are not living in a sane world: Bittorrent seed sites have been shut down repeatedly in the U.S., and the Bittorrent seeds basically just tell where to download material, not providing it itself. Maybe the FSF interprets the powers of the GPL in the most stringent way in order to have it challenged: if courts finally decide that linking never affords any power of copyright, it will be a win for software freedom. Every power that the GPL can be shown not to have is a power that no other license can have. So there is little to be gained by the FSF by not assuming the most. If it gets thrown out by some court eventually, it sets a precedent that also restricts the power of proprietary licenses. > Usefulness is not a criterion for software to be a derivative work > or not. An OS (even compiled) is useless without a computer with the > appropriate instruction set, but that doesn't make it a derivative > work of the processor's microcode, design, or assembly language > mnemonics (I still have Intel's 8080 Assembly Language manual, which > mentions at the bottom of every page of the first chapter that the > mnemonics are copyrighted: "ALL MNEMONICS © 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977 > INTEL CORPORATION" :). Well, thank _God_. That's probably the reason that Zilog invented its own, much saner mnemonics. -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
